


Snow White: Endgame

by ChastityTheUnwise



Category: Disney Princesses, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, CREATIVE TITLE, Crack Crossover, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dark, Dark Princess, Death, Disney Movies, Drama, F/M, Fantasy, Final Battle, Grief/Mourning, MacGuffins, Magic, Rescue Missions, Swords, The Dwarfs Are Infinity Stones, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-03-27 16:02:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19016167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChastityTheUnwise/pseuds/ChastityTheUnwise
Summary: The seven dwarfs are dead.In the six years since their passing, the universe has been plunged into chaos; countries destroyed by famine and plague, torn asunder by war after bloody war. Hope is lost.With Queen Grimhilde long-dead, an emptiness has claimed Snow White, ex-general and last of her line. Not even her Prince can shake it: soon, he fears, they will both be gone.Until one day, an artefact appears. A wand, a reality-bender, recovered from the corpse of the last Fairy Godmother, and which once before has turned time backwards. The seven dwarfs that forged the universe can be found again.Snow White has a chance to fix everything, to reverse the damage the witch caused, and to bring her friends back from oblivion.A chance to get her old life back.A final chance to save the universe.A SNOW WHITE / AVENGERS: ENDGAME CROSSOVER





	1. Chapter 1

The dust settled slowly across the broken ground. The ruins of the village were smoking, thin grey lines puffing half-heartedly from the rubble, evidence of the fires that burned still within. Even the storm which had passed by only an hour before had failed to dampen them. The woman turned away with a sigh, her boots padding softly over the damp ground as she headed back for the forest.

She’d known the people who had lived here, however briefly. Decent people, if not good, which was a rare enough thing itself these days.

The undergrowth welcomed her back with its usual dark embrace, the murky leaves folding in about her as she left the village behind. Tall trunks rose all around, great branches creaking overhead in the still air. A few spindly saplings struggled for life in the shadows of these collosi, straining for what meagre light fell through the swaying boughs. It fed one in fifty, only the strongest; weak and twisted beams filtering down just enough to let them stem for a while, before it could sustain them no longer: enough to sprout, too little to thrive. No tree would ever grow here again.

The heartwoods had always been the safest places, and even now, warped and weak as they were, they still offered some protection. Soon, she knew, that would cease. The Horde were ever-advancing, and four years ago this heart-tree had been as inaccessible as it was hidden: now it could be reached in twenty minutes with determination and a hacksaw.

At the cabin, Prince was waiting.

She hated the way he looked at her these days, his big blue eyes so wide and sad. There was a disappointment in them that he couldn’t hide, much as he might try. It hurt her more than she’d admit, and it hurt most sharply because he _didn’t know_. He didn’t know what it had been like, he didn’t know why they were out here, why she had given up fighting. He only saw defeat, and she knew he couldn’t understand why.

So she didn’t look at him as she entered, keeping her eyes firmly in front of her, firmly away from him. And when she did have to turn, did have to see that once-bold face lined with regret, her words flew from her as quickly as she could make them. She told him about the village, and a weight lifted as she saw his expression shift.

“The third one this month,” he said, his lips tight.

“Yes,” she replied. She felt a sort of savage satisfaction at his dismay.

“They’ll be here soon.”

“Probably,” she agreed.

“We have to leave.” His voice was steady and decisive, the statement presented as hard fact, rather than the argument they’d been having for weeks.

She shook her head. “And where would we go? We’d never get past the lines.”

A vein pulsed in his jaw. “We could, if we tried.” _But you won’t_.

She didn’t miss the subtext. She knew it was true, too. They could make it past the Horde, who were neither particularly disciplined or observant, if they put their minds to it -- it probably wouldn’t even be that hard. So she evaded the silent accusation, and asked instead, “Where would we go? The mines? The castle? Cinderella’s palace fell months ago, and that was the nearest stronghold for leagues.”

“Leave the country,” he returned. “Head for Arendelle, or Corona. Queen Rapunzel still stands, I’m sure if we--”

“And leave my country behind?” She gave him a look she hoped was fierce. Thrust, parry, riposte. She felt a pang of sadness for how easy their conversations used to be, how comfortable, how natural.

“Why not!” he cried. “The kingdom has fallen, you said so yourself. No place here is safe anymore. We can’t win -- or so you seem convinced -- so leave! Someone will take us in.”

“We’d never make it.”

“We have to _try!_ ” His eyes were deep and passionate, as frustrated and earnest as the sea, and for once she found she couldn’t look away. Belief shone in those eyes, belief that flowed of a hope not yet dead, that still burned inside him brighter than the sun. He knew they could escape, could start afresh, could win...she knew he was wrong. As she stared, unspeaking, that disappointment sparked again behind his hope, and that was enough to break the spell.

“I can’t,” she said simply. He didn’t miss the singular. The other half of the sentence hung in the air between them, as effective a wall as any stone. She saw his eyes harden, hurt taking flame. He opened his mouth, then paused. She fancied she could see him physically biting back his reply. _Do it_ , she willed. _Say it, end it_. But he said nothing, jaw snapping shut, expression cold. He turned without another word, and the cabin door shuddered in his wake.

The cool air which replaced him was empty and bitter, stinging on her skin. She welcomed the feeling, welcomed the pang in her heart and the guilt that pricked her as his footsteps receded.

_How dare he? He doesn’t know, he wasn’t there. He has no right!_

He would leave soon. She could feel it coming; it had been building for years, this tension between them. Stretched and stretched and stretched like leather, until, next week or next month or next year, it would snap. He’d marched at her side against Grimhilde, despite his disagreement. He’d stayed with her as she’d fought even after. He’d fled with her, run with her, even as he’d counselled against it.

She knew he wouldn’t die with her.

They _could_ reach Corona, or Arendelle, or Maldonia, if they put their minds to it. They might even be welcomed there -- certainly, if Rapunzel were still alive she’d let them through. _But it would only be delaying the inevitable_. The Darkness, whatever it was, was going to win in the end. Its corruption was unceasing, unavoidable, unstoppable. It could barely be slowed. Some kingdoms still stood, it was true, and maybe, in two or three years, they might still stand, the land around them swallowed whole, their borders a hundredth of their previous triumph. Even so, they too would fall in time. In twenty years the memory of light would be gone entirely; in a hundred, even the Darkness would wane.

She sat down heavily, her movements detached.

Prince’s hope was useless, naive. It smelled sweet and fresh, and tasted crisp as an apple at first bite. Inside, it was black and rotten, and the ash it crumbled to sour and choking. A lie.

There could be no point in stalling, putting off death for the limp reward of more sorrow, more destruction, more pain. To stretch on to see the last of the world melt away before her eyes.

Die here or die later, it made no difference.

Snow White covered her face with her hands and wept tears that had long since been spent.

It was only a matter of time.


	2. Chapter 2

_The world was pulsing. Her vision throbbed, her chest thundered, her ears thrummed. Blood rushed through every vein in her body, the universe blurring by at triple speed. She felt at the same time hyper-aware of every muscle and hair and nerve, and completely numb._

_By the time the battle was over, her arm ached._ Steeldancer _felt heavy in her grasp, its handle slick with sweat and blood. Prince stood beside her, his own sword streaked with mud and bone, dagger hanging loosely from his other hand._

_In front of them rose the castle, climbing tall from the dark rocks it was fused to. Shadowed and looming, its high towers and clawing spires cut through the sun with sharp angularity, the sinking light blotted out behind that spiny structure._

_“Come on,” said Snow White, fingers gripping the sword’s hilt, “it’s time to kill a witch.”_

She was sticky with sweat.

Little enough light broke through the trees to reach the cabin, and any warmth it once had had was leeched away entirely by the time it touched the ground. The forest was cold, and the cabin colder still.

She could still feel her heart pounding. Beside her, Prince shifted. She was glad she hadn’t woken him.

She slipped softly out of bed, leaving the blanket behind with regret, hanging her legs over the edge for one second, two, before the worn grip of her boots wrapped her in their reassuring embrace.

The air outside was biting, the pale moon in its blasted glory smeared above her head. When it had broken, something had happened to the seas, or so she had heard, but the greater impact had been upon the night. She imagined the forest as it must once have been: green, leafy branches swaying gently, ferns like feathers brushing the trunks, the whole scene lit in a pale silvery glow. An image of quiet beauty. She supposed there might even have been flowers, their loud colours thrown into pearly elegance by the graceful moonlight.

Now, there were only jagged shadows, and beyond that, darkness.

The night pulled the flush from her cheeks, the sweat on her skin cool and dry. Her heartbeat cooled with it, slowing with an awkward stutter to its steady, empty thudding.

She hadn’t had that dream in such a long time, she’d thought she was rid of it. Of course, she should have known better -- such things were never defeated entirely, not truly, and it had been foolish to think otherwise -- but somehow she’d believed it gone. Her nightmares had worsened, her body had weakened, and she’d accepted it gladly. How she had been fool enough to think the dream vanished, to take the bargain with a nod and a smile, she didn’t know. The possibility of such a fair trade was laughable. That would be just, and justice had died with the dwarfs.

Many things had died with the dwarfs.

She remembered her first moonlit flight into a forest -- not this forest, of course, and she supposed it hadn’t really been moonlit either, though it had certainly felt as though it should have been -- the darkness crowding in around her, the cackling faces and grasping claws of the trees, the hundred eyes peering from every gap, the awful, terrible unfamiliarity of it all. The thought made her smile, but it was a bitter air. What a fool she had been in those days -- what a perfect fool. Her fear then had been thoughtless, stupid, a child’s fear of what it couldn’t quite see. Part of her longed for that fear again, or at least the simplicity of it: now she knew what lay in the dark, and it was far worse than she ever could have thought.

If only the trees had faces again, blazing yellow glares and toothy grins. If only eyes lurked in the shadows, narrowed and dangerous. If only logs were crocodiles and branches claws and vines a tangle.

If only there were any life here left at all.

Something rustled in the darkness.

Snow White tensed, muscles under her thick nightdress tightening as she reached for a sword that wasn’t there. Her gaze didn’t move from the forest, from the trees the noise had come from. She stared into that void, straining to see something, anything.

The forest was utterly silent once more.

Had she imagined it? Was she finally going over the edge of that particular cliff, the sheer face of black rock overlooking that dread pit? She supposed it would be the natural next step, after the distance she’d fallen already. Once, she had thought herself at the bottom, lying at the very base of wretchedness with nowhere further left to sink. That had lasted all of a month, before she’d dropped again, and realised that the well was neverending, that each new floor was nothing but a bump along the way, a slanted ledge on the face of an abyss of infinite depth. There was always further to fall.

Maybe she had imagined it, then. The forest had certainly not moved, not a breath, since the sound, and it had been a quiet sound to begin with. Distant.

_Maybe it was an animal_ , she thought bitterly. _Hah_.

More likely it had been a branch, a dead limb cracking and falling to the ground. Blown by a stray gust of wind...

Equally, it might be the Horde.

She should go out there anyway, just to check. If it _was_ the Horde, this might be their last chance to escape. If it wasn’t, she’d be no colder than she was now.

Snow White didn’t move, still standing, still listening. The frigid air hung all around her, immovable as any solid, as dense in her lungs as clay. It surrounded her and pervaded her, intimate and hateful, dead as the land beneath. Her fingers were brittle, frozen into clenched fists around an imaginary hilt. It hurt to breathe in this air, it burned her throat, and besides, the sun would soon be up, and the day in motion. What would happen would happen.

She stayed out for a moment and longer, her breath misting the air. With a movement as swift and sudden as her sword strokes of old, she turned, and whisked back inside.


	3. Chapter 3

The girl’s name was Anastasia, and her story was about to end. Queen Cinderella’s sister -- in all but blood -- looked worn, sort of _faded_ around the edges, like her very being was bleeding away through her wounds. Her breath was weak, her voice a dry rasp that told as much of her punctured lung as the blood on her side did.

She was, as far as she was aware, the last remnant of Napoli; the last survivor. She would die alone, divorced from her country and her family, in a stranger’s land and by a stranger’s side. She was here on a promise.

Cinderella had not died well. Once, her sister’s death would have been shouted from the rooftops, announced by long unfurling scroll and black grieving colours in every street of civilised country on the planet -- it should have been important, should have meant something, should have been mourned -- but there was no one left for sorrow, now.

Anastasia had wept for days, as she ran, spending nights in ruined forests and blackened wrecks, anywhere hidden. Her eyes were even now raw and sore, edged in a dark purple bruising that refused to break. She’d thought it might have improved, when the husk of the Palace had shrunk from view, but that had only increased her loneliness, the sense of utter isolation that clung to every step. The knowledge that she, and she alone, was all that was left of everyone she had ever known. The solitary fragment of all that had been before her.

The infection had started in the south, it was thought. Or, it had been thought, when there were people left to think it. No one knew where it had come from first, how it had arrived in the country -- perhaps a trader had brought it from the west, perhaps it had blown in on some freak wind, perhaps a bird had dropped a seed that grew a poisoned tree...in any case, the first report, such as it was, had come from the south. A letter from the hand of a man who had been taught to write by a crow, or so it seemed. It told something of a beast, something of a man, and something of a fire which had eaten the village to kill it.

How were they to know? How could they take such a letter as more than folly? As more than a mad scribble on a page? What could they do but bring the remaining villagers deeper into the country to be re-homed?

If the fire had killed them all it would have been a mercy.

The second report was less senseless, more fantastic. A settlement cursed with some sort of hunger, a hunger not for bread or for gold, but for the flesh and blood of their fellow man. This report had been followed by another, and another. Three towns taken by a plague of unknown origin, four hundred people dead at least. They hadn’t stayed dead for long.

Two reports a day grew to three or four. Dead men walking the streets, corpses rising as if on strings to haunt their barren homes. After more deaths, people learned to steer clear of these shambling settlements, leave them be, as they were, contained.

The Fairy Godmother had never heard anything like it. Necromancy was a dark art indeed, and practised by so few as to be nearly extinct; those that still etched its glyphs lived far, far away, past the seas and civilisation. Nothing on this scale could be achieved by their power.

Queen Cinderella ordered the villages burned, to stop the spread before some wretched soul made it in and out alive. That night, with oil and torches, her men set the houses ablaze, thatched roofs catching and turning the buildings to ash. The corpses made a low moaning as they burned, the sound of air escaping rotten lungs. Their putrid gas turned the flames green and the fire wild. Thick black smoke poured from twelve villages for days afterward, covering their neighbours in a smell that made their stomachs turn.

For a week the dead were gone, for a week the smoke kept broiling. For a week the Palace relaxed, and the Godmother ruminated. By the end of that week, the disease had spread to half the country, and the townsfolk tore each other apart. The bodies rose, desperate people turned to desperate measures, and all of Napoli felt the heat of those great pyres.

In the end, not much was left. The Palace was evacuated, and even as they cowered in the mines below the castle, Cinderella began to cough. Charming stayed by her side until her eyes turned ravenous, but he couldn’t bear to do the deed himself -- that fell to her son. No one could bring themselves to mince the body; there was no point. Already, the royal heir was clutching at his throat.

The mines were a maze, an endless labyrinth of rough-cut tunnels bearing down overhead, their wooden supports already cracking. Anastasia didn’t see the point, really, as the Fairy Godmother took her by the wrist and dragged them deeper underground. Her sister was dead, her nephew was dead, her country was dead. But the Godmother had brought her anyway; they had ever been close, and there was a strange glint in the woman’s eye. In the caves, Anastasia survived off fruit conjured from timber, and water licked from the stone -- the Godmother did not need to eat -- but it failed to fill her. Every night the fruit returned to wood in her stomach, and the water was dark, and terribly bitter. Her skin shrank and she grew gaunt, an illness taking her that drew the meat from her bones. A clawing tore at her stomach, and she wondered idly if this was what the infection felt like.

At last, they reached the exit. The Fairy Godmother had lost none of her plump, her clothes were untouched, but her cheer was gone entirely. Her wand flicked with none of its old elegance as she summoned a bubble of fresh air around each of their heads, barely a word was said as they set off away from the town. They had surfaced in the countryside, from a hill overlooking a scatter of streets. Even from this distance, Anastasia could make out the janky movements of the Risen.

She ate nuts from the trees and berries from the bushes, they caught a fish in the river and skinned it to cook. Once, she bit into a trout that had been stuck in the reeds, and had had to throw it up an hour later when a corpse leapt from the water upstream.

They travelled for three days and three nights until at last they reached a town they couldn’t avoid. It was a sprawling place, flat and empty, sitting squat at the edge of a river swollen with the recent showers. Crouched like a beast, guarding the bridge they must pass.

The streets were eerily quiet, the houses oddly peaceful for their smashed doors and boarded windows. They were almost at the bridge when the Fairy Godmother had paused.

“I hear something,” she had said, and they broke into a run.

From alleys and basements, from roofs and windows, the dead poured. A mass of writhing, twisted shapes, a mockery of the people they once had been, a broken crowd of bodies shuffled forth. The bridge was already blocked, but the Godmother waved her wand and the corpses blew apart like dandelions on a summer breeze. They reached the crossing, every gasping step sending lances through her frail form, and were almost over when the Godmother let out a sudden cry.

Anastasia looked back to see a corpse latched onto the Fairy Godmother’s shoulder, teeth digging hard into her flesh. As she pointed the wand to vanish the body, another leapt onto her back. A third tore a chunk from her leg. The Godmother howled, a visceral, animal sound that seemed strange on her lips, and with a flash every soulless vessel within five metres of her shrank to rocks. Anastasia took her arm and helped her stumble on, and as they reached the other side, the wand glowed and the bridge burst into flames behind them. She was desperately glad of the air-bubbles.

By nightfall they had entered a forest, and she laid the Godmother down as gently as she could. The woman was pale, the wound at her shoulder black and oozing. Both knew she didn’t have long.

“Heal yourself,” Anastasia begged, “please!”

“No point,” replied the Godmother, “the wound would return at midnight. Always...always midnight...” Her breath was shallow, pained. “And besides, the magic must be conserved. I have used too much already...”

Anastasia felt her heart sink then, as if part of her already knew what was coming, why the Godmother had dragged her along for so far. As if she knew the curse the next words would bestow upon her.

“There is a chance...” the Godmother started. “There is a chance to undo this...to set things back the way they were.” She explained the mission, the purpose that was to fill Anastasia’s final days. She must find Snow White, must tell her the last hope for the world, the power of the wand. “...Promise me, Ana.”

“I promise,” said Anastasia Tremaine, even as the words clawed at her heart. For what else could she do?

The woman smiled, and her hand was warm against Anastasia’s as she told her how to keep the bubble charm running. She spoke freely then, of her life and her purpose, and a tear struck down her cheek as she felt the life leave her.

Anastasia watched, and listened, as the last Fairy Godmother died.

In the morning, she took the wand in her pack, and set out again toward Tabor.

It was simple enough to avoid the dead -- they did not think, they could not plan -- to evade involved only careful movement, giving every village, every town, every lonely mill the widest berth she could, no matter how abandoned they seemed. Only once more did she have to go through a street, and she had crept with a torch in the night before and burned it to the ground before daring to enter. There were no lungs left to breathe it in, anyway.

The first sign she had left her country had been a Horde patrol, escaped by hiding in a tree. The Horde torched villages much as Napoli had done, and lying on that branch, staring down as the black legion marched below, she felt a pang of sorrow that there had been no moment of passing from one country to another. She would never see Napoli again, and she didn’t even know what her last view of it had been.

The princess had proven harder to find. She had hidden herself well, and left little trace behind to follow. Anastasia had despaired more than once her quest would fail. Yet the country was vast, and overrun with Darkness -- in the end, there were only so many places left to hide. She had searched first the dwarfs’ cottage, but that was gone completely. She had searched through mines and caves, towns hidden by valleys and mountaintop monasteries. The heartwoods had been her last desperate guess, and this forest one of the last unchecked of those.

As she’d searched, moving precisely and carefully, her health had failed. The wood in her gut ached, and the need for constant vigilance left her mind as exhausted as her body. She longed for the end, and yet could not give up. She had promised the Godmother, after all.

The Horde had finally caught up two nights ago. Anastasia had been awake for too long, and had missed a dark shape in the corner of her eye, or had failed to hide her tracks properly, or something, it didn’t matter. They had caught her, she had fought, she had won, barely. The capture had been her own fault, the escape nothing but blind luck. She knew she was dying, she thought she had failed. If she had known how the wand worked, maybe she would have tried to heal herself, to scrape and pull and extra day or two from the void, but the thing remained a mystery.

Bleeding, choking, she had stumbled into the forest, limping among the trees, and when limping was beyond her, crawling. That was where she had been found, lying in a clearing, halfway past the jaws of death. She didn’t remember Prince finding her, didn’t remember anything beyond collapsing, beyond the moon, high overhead, its trickle of light pale in the sky, the broken shards hanging in peace as she felt her eyes closing.

All this she told Snow White.

Snow White pulled back, resting her head against the chair and staring blankly ahead. Her hands fell motionless between her legs. The wand sat on the table beside them, a long white rod, perfectly straight and perfectly smooth, tapered to a point along one end, looking not at all like something with enough power to...to...

She couldn’t let herself think like that. Anastasia had said there was a finite amount of magic left in the thing, if it even was what she said it was. The girl was clearly distressed, and so close to death Snow White was sure she wouldn’t last the night -- she could be forgiven for delusion, for this ridiculous fancy. Everyone wanted the world to go back to how it was, none more so than she, the girl could hardly be blamed for wanting a way to do just that, for believing this...stick...to be not just magical, but miraculous. The universe didn’t work like that, though. There were no-- there _could be no_ second chances, it simply wasn’t that easy.

Anastasia let out a breath of air, feeble and trembling, weak and hoarse. It sounded more like she was deflating than breathing. Snow White examined her skeletal face, skin stretched so thin over bone it was almost translucent. Her lips were tight with pain, and she had that off-colour, sickly smell about her that would have drawn flies for miles, when flies still buzzed here. She had hours left.

Snow White remembered seeing her before, she thought. When she had gone to Cinderella for aid against Grimhilde. She remembered a lanky, graceless girl standing just behind the Queen, clipboard in hand, quill scratching away furiously at every word. The distance between then and now yawned a thousand years.

The girl coughed, and it was a cough Snow White had heard many times before, on the battlefield, in the healing tents, from her mother. Almost instinctively, she reached out to take Anastasia’s hand. Its grip was frail, the bones knobbly, the skin cold as ice, but she felt the slight tightening nonetheless. Anastasia’s head lolled to the side, and her black eyes met Snow White’s own. She didn’t know what colour those eyes had been originally, before the loss and the illness and the pain, but there was something about them, an essential kindness, even through everything, that was breathtaking. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and she clasped the hand tighter.

“All right,” Snow White said, “tell me about the wand.”

Anastasia died before dawn.


End file.
